Victory of Evil Over Good : The Show Must Go On

One of the yardsticks for a successful politician is how easily you can hide your emotions behind the umpteenth rehearsed smiling face. Every time George Bush embraces Tony Blair he must be thinking "Dammit, this guy has a real funny accent. I better ask Condi for a translator". Blair on the other hand must be thinking "Jolly good heavens, how long I will have to bear with this nutty bloke who keeps smiling at whatever I say". But if you look at their faces all you see is a gleaming grin running from the left ear to the right symbolizing their strong bond of friendship. In short to be a good Neta you got to be an equally good Abhineta.

But our WB CM has always miserably failed in the emotion control department.Take that Dushomoy (Bad Times) incident in the mid 90-s. He was disillusioned by the functioning of the party and he put down his papers. Then like all literary aspiring Bengali he takes up the pen and writes a script criticizing the government called Dushomoy.If I am not wrong some CPI-M big-shots were even present in the opening show also.May be because the box office returns were not very encouraging or CPI-M think-tank was able to brainwash him the second time, finally Buddha brat returned back to Allimuddin Street.

Ever since he has been quite vocal about his dislikes despite of the strong discipline practiced within CPI-M. But he has always been the ideal portrayal of a middle class intellectual Bengali who reads Kafka, listens to Robindro-songit, watches Truffaut and smokes his cigarettes, all just the right way any average Bengali would do. Also he is honest to the core and is not afraid to do things differently, brains at Alimuddin Street always want to project him as the leader of the Bengalis.

Like all Bengali bhodroloks Budha-babu is passionate about the game of cricket and Saurav Ganguly's cricketing career. And when a Bengali gets passionate about anything , there is no stopping him except for hot rosogullas or smoked hilsa marinated in mustard sauce. So he sets himself on a jihad against the biggest kaafir of cricket who happens to be none else than the crafty CAB head our own Jaggu-dada.

CMs mission and vision narrowed down to save the CAB from the clutches of power hungry Jagmohan Dal-main-bahut-kuch-kaala-miya. He asks his trusted candidate Prasun Mukherjee, Kolkata Police Commissioner to send Dalmiya packing for his tirth-yatra from cricket administration. The battle plans are laid and swords are drawn at each other. The Calcutta media is the happiest to find day-to-day updates filling up news print or TV slots in otherwise a dull moment for news across the state.

To add to the twist, veteran Jyoti Basu and sport minister Subhas Chakraborty (whose contribution to Bengal sports has been organizing pop shows on sports ground) openly backed Dalmiya instead of the CMs candidate. Dialectics between old CPI-M and new CPI-M added more masala to the event. And when things are related to cricket can Kolkata's cricket price Sourav be left behind.

From the day he was dropped from the national team he had been trying to make a comeback by doing anything and everything other than scoring runs. From closed door meetings with Sharad Pawar to hiring tantrik for performing voodo magic he did anything that is written or yet to be written in the book. They say when you are facing bad times your judgement gets clouded. It's happening with Sourav too. His version of writing on the wall was that the chain of events would ensure Dalmiya's vanaprastha.

He immediately jumps his guns and issues a statement against Dalmiya, saying that among the things Dalmiya destroyed during his tenure at BCCI one was Sourav's cricketing career. I am not sure how it happened but may be Dalmiya as BCCI president must've assured that so long as he is in power Dada didn't need to concentrate on his cricketing skills to be in the team. Sourav must've since then stopped practicing to improve widely known and even widely exploited cricketing weaknesses. But immediately after Dalmiya was shown the way from BCCI HQ, Sourav was dropped from the team too. Thus the crafty cricket administrator destroyed the illustrious career of perhaps the greatest of Indian captains till date.

Although Budhadev literally left no stones unturned, Dalmiya, whom his predecessor ICC chief Malcolm Gray has described once as the man to be careful about, still had the trump card carefully concealed inside his sleeves(although most of the times he wears a sleeveless shirt). The night before the elections he pays a visit to the most colorful man of Indian politics, our rail minister Lallu P Yadav.

Lallu's cricket love starts from his chaddi-main-gilli-danda days in Bihar. Couple of years back his son was selected as the best player in the state by Bihar's cricket association headed by pappa Lallu. No eyebrows were raised because the award was presented by the then Bihar's CM herself, Ms Rabri Yadav. Since everything was in the family, I'm not sure whether the celebration took place in the family cow shed.

On that fatal night some deal must have been signed between these two cricket administrators, which is beyond my speculation and the fate of CAB was sealed. In the vote next day Dalmiya won a cut-throat finish leading by 5 votes of which 3 might've been from the different clubs owned by Indian railways.

Next day a disgruntled Buddha meets the press and declares this win as "Victory of evil over good" and vows that his agenda of the jihad would continue. A seasoned Dalmiya smiles and calls Sourav a "bachcha" (kid) and says he will do whatever he can to help the ex-captian's comeback. This could only mean in the game of cricket politics Sourav is yet to come out of his diapers and Dalmiya will get his revenge in due time. So to summarize the curtains of the drama is yet to be drawn and the plot assures of new twist and turns ahead.

Our worthy opposition at the parliament NDA who are yet to save their face from the yet to learn tol-mole-ke-bol Yaswant Singh's failed detective aspirations promises to present their share of the event. As if all the problems in the country are over NDA does a walk-out from the Loksabha asking Budhadev to be apologetic about his jihadi comments against Dalmiya.

Surely Indian politicians can any day beat the talented scriptwriters at Balaji Production up hail the motto of "The Show Must Go On".